Dragonfly

Dragonfly is a computer vision-based positioning system that provides forklifts, autonomous mobile robots, automated guided vehicles, and other moving vehicles with an accurate indoor location in GPS-denied environments. This solution uses standard cameras to enable RTLS with centimeter-level accuracy by analyzing real-time video streams from an onboard camera that’s connected to a small computing unit.

Dragonfly provides two types of accuracy and precision, including accuracy inside mapped and unmapped venues. When navigating in a mapped environment, Dragonfly’s accuracy depends on the precision of the triangulation of features in an area with a radius of confidence of 10 cm, which largely depends on several factors, including the quality of the camera used, the calibration, mapping and geo-referencing process, and the environment itself. 

Logistics companies will be able to use Dragonfly to either automate or streamline warehouse management and track AMRs and AGVs for indoor navigation.

Dragonfly Features

Using Dragonfly enables logistics companies to streamline warehouse management and improve their inventory management, supply chain management, and dispatching efficiency. Among the features present in Dragonfly that help in achieving these are the following:

3D positions and orientation

Dragonfly’s indoor localization technology effectively maps indoor areas using either stereoscopic or monocular cameras to accumulate drift over time when navigating unknown environments which then allows it to close loops by going to already mapped areas. however, it is worth noting that these maps are not human-intelligible and aren’t readable by other software because the software is only designed to provide the precise location of different moving devices and not deliver end-user 3D maps.

Dragonfly maps unknown areas and tracks vehicles and drones to improve warehouse management and dispatch.

Real-time positions

All vehicles installed with a Dragonfly Kit will be tracked in real-time using the Dragonfly RTLS. This enables precise tracking of vehicles moving indoors without requiring UWB antennas, BLE or Wi-Fi receivers, and NFC tags. The only things necessary are a wide-angle USB camera on the roof of a vehicle and a computing unit that’s protected inside a junction box located behind the driver’s seat.

Users will be able to track the real-time position of certain vehicles and even check their location history.

10 cm average accuracy

Dragonfly can provide an accuracy of 10 cm using either WGS84 coordinates or X, Y metric coordinates. This allows users to accurately track where certain vehicles are to ensure that they don’t get lost. The 10 cm accuracy depends on the quality of the camera, the one-time camera calibration process, the one-time mapping process, and the one-time geo-referencing process, as well as the lighting, amounts of objects, availability of textures, and dimensions in the environment.

No internet connection required

Dragonfly is not a cloud-based solution, and all processing is done locally, either on the device itself or on an on-premise server. The requirements for onboard processing are a wide-angle USB camera on board the device and a computing unit with at least an i5-8^th Gen CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a 150 GB solid-state drive for each device tracked. The requirements for on-premise processing are at least one central server with an i7 or i9-8^th Gen CPU, 64 GB of RAM, and a 300 GB solid-state drive. Neither processing solution requires an internet connection, but a local WLAN connection is recommended for onboard processing, while it is required for an on-premise server.

According to the Dragonfly product sheet, a cloud-based warehouse management system is available. This solution provides a device’s location in real-time through a dashboard and an API to allow for custom integration.

Dragonfly Cloud Dashboard

Using Dragonfly allows users to use the Dragonfly Cloud dashboard to provide remote tracking capabilities. Logistics companies can see real-time and historical positions of their devices, access historical analytics, metrics, and KPIs, and export plots, graphs, diagrams, heatmaps, spaghetti lines, timelines, and data sheets to improve operations. Among the important KPIs and metrics that users can access are the maximum and average speed of the vehicles, the distance traveled, the time in movement, and other statuses like offline and stopped.

Dragonfly Benefits

Using Dragonfly helps logistics companies improve their efficiency in managing their inventories and dispatching goods. Some of the benefits of using Dragonfly that lead to better warehouse management are the following:

Easy setup

Users won’t have to worry about having trouble installing or configuring Dragonfly because the installation and configuration time is less than an hour. Users don’t need to install receivers, tags, antennas, or nodes; and they only need to set up the Dragonfly Kit to get started.

Scalable

Dragonfly is scalable, and users can add as many vehicles and robots as they want to track as long as their architecture supports it. When using onboard processing, users will only need to ensure that they have enough USB cameras and computing units to track additional robots or vehicles.

No internet required

Logistics companies have the option to opt for an on-board or on-premise processing solution, so they won’t need a constant internet connection to use the platform. On-premise users only need wireless LAN to run two to three Dragonfly instances with cameras moving around in a 10,000 sqm venue; no internet connection is required.

Minimize accidents

Dragonfly can be used to track the speed and acceleration of forklifts, and its ability to track the vehicles’ positions can be integrated into safety solutions to warn personnel if a collision is imminent. These enable users to configure speed limits in the warehouse or certain areas, configure forklifts to automatically limit speed, adjust routes to lessen the chances of collisions, and give operators visual or acoustic alerts when there could be an imminent danger or if they’re exceeding the speed limit.

Using Dragonfly helps minimize accidents, keeping stop times low. Dragonfly’s geo-fences, speed limiters, and alerts are instrumental in ensuring that the site is safe.

Maximize productivity

Users will be able to get the location of each of their forklifts and analyze them over time, and they can optimize their routes to reduce the distance traveled, avoid crowded routes, and make them more efficient. It will be possible to see which forklifts are being over and underutilized,  which gives an insight into how they use them to reduce operational costs, maintenance downtime, and improve management.

Using Dragonfly allows users to keep a record of all the activities and events on the site that need to be analyzed to improve the efficiency and safety of forklift operators. Additionally, they can reduce maintenance downtimes and maintenance costs since they avoid overusing certain devices.

Prevent forklifts from going missing

Forklifts frequently go missing on large constriction sites, causing significant delays in task completion. Being able to track forklifts allows companies to monitor them and keep operational costs down by minimizing mishaps, delays, and accident-related expenditures.

High ROI

Dragonfly allows users to optimize their operations, increase productivity, and track the effectiveness of their tracked devices, allowing users to have higher ROIs than when using other solutions. This is also thanks to the fact that there’s no need to install UWB antennas, Wi-Fi receivers, RFID tags, and other hardware.

Dragonfly Pricing

There is no information available on Onit Group’s or  Dragonfly’s website regarding the cost of a Dragonfly Kit. Users can estimate some parts of the total cost by checking the minimum requirements for both the onboard and on-premises processing options. It is necessary to contact Onit to get a quote.

Conclusion

Dragonfly is an excellent warehouse management system that effectively helps track forklifts, keep sites safe, and improve productivity. This solution can work in both known and unknown spaces and is quite accurate with its location data, especially when using a quality camera on the device. Additionally, all location data can be integrated into existing safety solutions to prevent collisions. Dragonfly itself is a commercial solution that users can integrate into custom applications using Java for Linux and Windows.

Dragonfly leverages wide-angle cameras, so robots and drones that already have fisheye cameras installed can immediately use Dragonfly to map areas and provide accurate indoor locations, even in GPS-denied areas. Both drone 3D positioning and tracking are also possible with Dragonfly, allowing users to use drones for tasks that require a 3D-accurate location, and this data is provided as 6-DOF. Other 3D location data provided also includes the orientation presented as yaw, pitch, and roll angles and the altitude off the floor.

Logistics companies can use Dragonfly to keep track of their devices and take advantage of centimeter-level accuracy to pinpoint where certain devices are. This means users are less likely to lose forklifts and other devices, preventing downtime. Companies will also be able to keep costs down as they can monitor which devices are overutilized, allowing them to plan smarter.